Wanna take a ride? What would you do? Take your phone, open the transportation mobile app, one tap and grab a ride. You’ll get the ride in minutes, the driver comes in you just hop in and the driver takes you where you want to go. After a successful ride, pay for the trip easily without the cash or a card in your hand. This is how taking a ride is; as easy as a pie. Now when you have to grab a ride, the real challenge for the online cab aggregators is which ride-hailing platform the rider chooses or prefers. Uber and Lyft both being the capable ride-sharing services it’s always Uber vs Lyft.
Uber and Lyft both based in San Francisco, have been contending with each other in offering ride-sharing services that are cheaper than renting a car. While there are other ride-sharing apps such as Sidecar and Hail-o, it’s always the contenders Uber and Lyft who command the greatest portion of the market. Needless to say, ride sharing has become so popular across the world that several major automakers are either partnering with Uber and Lyft. By this, it can be understood that the ride-hailing market is filled with a canopy of Uber and Lyft.
Launched in June 2012, the on-demand transportation company, Lyft, operates in more than 360 U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles and provides over 1 million rides per day. Founded in 2008, the peer-to-peer ridesharing, food delivery, and transportation network company, Uber, is currently available in 71 countries and has its operations in 633 cities worldwide. Uber and Lyft are available and dominant in US markets and have been engaged in a fierce battle here in the hometown with the two firms now sharing 77% of the US ride-hailing market. However, it’s Uber that has a huge expansion outside the US and has a market share globally.
When it comes to the services, both services use an app that can be downloaded for free for iOS and Android devices. Both the apps, function well and do offer most of the same features on a basic level like requesting ride at GPS location, plugging in your destination address, watching drivers in real time using GPS, see how long your driver takes to arrive, rating the drivers after the completion of trip and above all making payment through pre-selected preferences like credit card/debit card, Google Wallet, Apple Pay, etc.
Apart from the aforementioned basic services, Uber has seven different tiers of services for its riders while Lyft has only three. When it comes to the process of requesting a ride, it’s almost identical, nevertheless, it might differ depending on the locations. In some random locations, Lyft car drivers arrive faster whereas in some locations Uber does. However, the entire process is dependent on the nearest drivers available and it may vary depending on the availability.
When it comes to the pricing, it’s not the same case every time as we know peak hours change everything. While Lyft’s “Prime Time” pricing caps out at three times the normal base rate during peak hours, Uber’s “Surge Pricing,” can reach as high as eight times the base rate. Both the apps estimate the cost of your trip while choosing a ride by entering the destination, but Uber steals the show by showing the price of your ride in real time. On the other hand, Lyft also allows passengers to tip drivers through the app.
Uber has raised about $14 billion in equity and debt financing from more than 70 venture capital firms, private equity funds, and high-net-worth individuals, that made it attain a valuation of $69 billion. Lyft, meanwhile, has raised $4.11 billion in a funding that gave it a valuation of $11.5 billion. Lyft has even expanded into Canada in December 2017 as a competitor to its rival.
Uber is also the largest ride-hailing platform in Australia, apart from other online cab aggregators operating in the country like GoCatch and Taxify. Uber competes with Taxify, Europe’s biggest ride-hailing app, which set up its business in Sydney late last year and expanded to Melbourne earlier in January 2018. The US firm, Uber, which was made legal in Australia in 2015, gave rides to 3.7 million Australians in the three months to December – almost four times the number of passengers it carried in the same period two years earlier. While Lyft provides over 1 million rides per day, Uber, on the other hand, reached the one million miles a day milestone in 2014. However, with a valuation of $68 billion, Uber is the world’s most valuable start-up and the world’s largest rideshare service.